Editor’s note: This article has been updated throughout.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is closing out one of the nastiest races of the 2026 cycle by suggesting that Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, his opponent in the Ohio governor’s race, has lied about the well-documented childhood sexual abuse she experienced for political gain.
In a contest already marked by sharp personal attacks and partisan rancor, Ramaswamy’s latest attempt to paint Acton as unfit for office came in the form of a minute-long ad this week featuring Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged mother.
The tenor of the ad, which platforms a mother whose 12-year-old daughter was sexually abused by her husband while in her custody, has incensed survivors of abuse, motivated Democrats to throw additional resources in the race and prompted prominent Republicans, including current GOP Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, to denounce it.
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But the country’s highest-profile Republicans — President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan — have instead doubled down. Vance said Wednesday while campaigning in Cincinnati that Republicans should “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race.” Trump wrote on social media that Ramaswamy should “keep it up.” He also suggested that any daughter whose mother spoke about her in this way should be precluded from serving and encouraged mothers of other Democratic candidates to come forward to say their children are liars, or “much worse.”
Acton, a pediatrician and former health director under DeWine, has spoken openly during her campaign about facing abuse and neglect as a child. She has said that for a time the family lived in a tent before she and her brother moved in with their biological father. Court records and local media reports confirm that Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, lost custody of her daughter and younger son in 1978 after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested, charged and indicted for raping then 12-year-old Acton. They also corroborate other details of Acton’s story.
In Ramawamy’s ad, Donna Arthur nevertheless claims that her daughter has “lied her entire life.”
“Amy has a serious problem, she is a liar, she lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent, none of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help. And she can’t help you if she needs help herself,” Arthur said.
Acton responded in a Facebook post.
“My birth mother did nothing to protect me. I’ve always known that she was deeply sick and unwell,” Acton wrote. “It’s sad to see Vivek Ramaswamy exploit her all for his own political gain.”
Cledith Arthur did not show up for a court hearing following his 1978 indictment. He and Donna Arthur left the state, and there were warrants out for his arrest. The Arthurs remained married until Cledith Arthur’s 2004 death in Pennsylvania.
When Acton was named health director, she told the Vindicator, her hometown newspaper in Youngstown, that the last time she saw her mother was in the courtroom after her stepfather was charged, when her mother rebuffed her kiss.
Ohio’s gubernatorial race is one of the most competitive in the country despite the Midwestern state solidly backing Trump in all three of his White House bids. Acton is vying to be the state’s first elected woman governor and the first Democrat elected to the office since 2006.
The most recent reliable nonpartisan polls show her with a 4-to-9 point lead over Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and failed Republican presidential candidate.
The contest has been notably light on policy. Though Acton and Ramaswamy have staked out different positions on everything from reproductive rights to data centers, neither candidate faced a competitive primary that compelled them to outline their policies in detail. Neither have been a legislator with a voting record to scrutinize. Acton has tightly controlled media access at her events and declined to debate Ramaswamy in the general election.
The ads blanketing the battleground state for months now have therefore largely been personal attacks. Acton has suggested Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire and a biotech fraud. Ramaswamy and others in his orbit have sought to portray Acton as unfit to lead Ohio, zeroing in on a 2019 incident when Acton’s daughter called police and said her mother and stepfather were arguing — and that Acton had been drinking.
The disagreement had ended by the time police arrived. Acton’s husband has taken responsibility for starting the argument and said that his wife had a single drink. Ohio’s Republican Party still posted a computer-generated image of Acton’s Jeep with the license plate: “Drunk Mom.”
Previously, Ramaswamy-aligned ads and the candidate himself have suggested that the childhood abuse Acton experienced — and her response to it — should be disqualifying.
Childhood abuse is common. At least one in seven children in the country experience abuse or neglect each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rates of child abuse and neglect are higher among families experiencing poverty or economic insecurity.
Ramaswamy in April shared a video on the social media site X of a speech in which he said Acton had no positive vision to lead Ohio, “other than to complain about what someone else did to her,” seemingly referring to her childhood abuse.
Ads run by the Ramaswamy-aligned V-PAC — the name stands for Victors, not Victims — highlighted Acton’s disclosure on her medical licensing application that she sought therapy to process childhood abuse. V-PAC is funded by a group of out-of-state billionaires that includes Elon Musk, the owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.
“I won’t normalize somebody who said my childhood is just something I’m complaining about,” Acton said in a Tuesday appearance on Spectrum News.
Acton added that Ramaswamy has shown a “pattern” of using his opponents’ family dynamics for political attacks. She pointed to Ramaswamy’s comment directed at Nikki Haley in a Republican presidential primary debate that she should “take care of your family first” during an exchange over TikTok and her adult daughter’s use of the video-sharing platform.
When the video with Acton’s estranged mother initially surfaced on social media Monday night, it did not state who paid for it or which candidate it supported, as is legally required for a political ad to air on television. By Tuesday evening, Ramaswamy confirmed to an ABC affiliate in Columbus that his campaign was responsible for it and defended its contents. By Wednesday morning, Axios reported that Ramaswamy’s campaign would drop $4 million to get the ad in front of Ohio voters in the final stretch before Election Day. The ad is already airing on Ohio television stations.
Ramaswamy’s Tuesday night campaign event was interrupted when an attendee attempted to confront him over the ad. Television personality Meghan McCain, the daughter of late GOP senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, wrote on X that the Ramaswamy spot was a “dastardly ad” that “never should have been created.” Democrat Sherrod Brown, who is vying to reclaim his former U.S. Senate seat representing Ohio, called the ad “disgusting.” The conservative National Review obtained court records that corroborated Acton’s account. Members of DeWine’s cabinet denounced the advertisement.
DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy as his successor, urged him on Thursday morning to take the ad down, saying it was “wrong” and that his wife had seen it on television hours before.
“The ad, on its face, is deeply, deeply troubling,” DeWine told reporters. “But when you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory, when you know that the husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury after hearing testimony … it to me, makes it more serious, it makes it more wrong. It’s wrong to run this ad.”
The Republicans in the White House disagreed. Trump initially told ABC News on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of the ad’s specifics. On Thursday, he wrote: “The Press is trying to convince everyone that this Ad is bad, because it’s so good! Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt.’”
“Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance said in Cincinnati.
Acton’s campaign released a response ad featuring her younger brother, Phil Stearns, who has said that Acton shares their childhood abuse not to complain but because it is “something that informs who she is and builds this core of strength that she has.”
“She was 11- and 12-years old, and to think that’s somehow a talking point? Shame on Vivek. It’s the contempt he has for Amy, it’s the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead,” Stearns said in the ad.
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